14 2.27.22 Illustration by Andrea Ucini
Studies Show By Kim Tingley
Denis Burkitt, an Irish surgeon, traveled
to Africa during World War II as a mem-
ber of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and
afterward he settled in Uganda to prac-
tice medicine. There he observed that a
surprising number of children developed
strange jaw tumors, a cancer that would
come to be known as Burkitt lymphoma.
Eventually, Burkitt sent samples of the
tumor cells to Middlesex Hospital Medical
School in London, where Michael Anthony
Epstein, a pathologist, and his colleagues
Yvonne Barr and Bert Achong examined
them through an electron microscope.
Their fi ndings — they noticed particles
shaped like a herpesvirus, only smaller —
were published in a landmark paper in
The Lancet in 1964 and spurred the real-
ization that this newly identifi ed member
of the Herpes viridae family, subsequently
named Epstein-Barr virus, was a cause of
Burkitt lymphoma. It was the fi rst evi-
dence that a viral infection could lead to
cancer. The virus has since been shown to
increase the risk of Hodgkin lymphoma,
as well as nasopharyngeal and stomach
cancer. It is also the virus most often
responsible for infectious mononucle-
osis, a disease usually characterized by
extreme fatigue, sore throat, fever and
swollen lymph nodes in the neck. These
symptoms can last for weeks and, in
chronic cases, recur for years.
We now know that upward of 90 per-
cent of adults have the Epstein-Barr virus.
As happens with other herpes viruses,
once you have been infected, the virus
stays with you forever — it deposits its
DNA alongside yours in the nucleus of
many of your cells. (RNA viruses, like
SARS-CoV-2, can be cleared from your
body.) Most people contract Epstein-Barr
in childhood: It is spread through body
fl uids, usually saliva; kissing is a frequent
route of transmission (as may be the shar-
ing of utensils). Young children, if they get
sick at all, typically develop symptoms
indistinguishable from those of a cold or
fl u; mono is more common when the fi rst
infection happens after puberty. ‘‘Most
people never know they’re infected,’’ says
Jeff rey Cohen, the chief of the Laboratory
of Infectious Diseases at the National Insti-
tute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The virus enters cells at the back of
the throat and from there moves into B
cells, a type of white blood cell that pro-
duces antibodies. In some B cells, the
virus replicates, making proteins thatWhat good will come from new
research that proves a virus
— one that almost all of us have —
‘causes’ multiple sclerosis?